As the sun’s 11-year cycle of magnetic storms moves closer to peak intensity sometime early next year, people who live at higher latitudes can expect to see colorful auroras lighting up the night sky. But what would it be like to look down at the auroras, or to move through them? In these striking images from NASA, we find out.

It’s not hard to jump online and learn about Albert Einstein’s intellectual contributions. Thanks to Yale, you can get a 60 minute primer on Einstein’s theoretical work. It’s called Einstein for the Masses.

We’ve always had the desire to leave our earth-bound bodies and take flight with the birds. We achieved the miracle of flight over a century ago. But only recently did we create a robot that can mechanically reproduce the beauty of birds in flight. And now we’ve taken the next step, actually joining birds high in the air.

“Nobody’s dreaming about tomorrow anymore,” says astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in this compelling little video on the decline of the American space program. “After we stopped going to the moon, it all ended. We stopped dreaming.” The video was put together by Evan Schurr with material from various sources.

Yesterday we featured a video of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” being played on a pair of Tesla coils. Today we keep the music going with something perhaps even more amazing: a swarm of autonomous flying robots playing the theme from the James Bond movies.

Earlier this week The New York Times published an interesting discussion between philosopher Michael Lynch and physicist Alan Sokal on epistemic first principles, or, as Lynch put it in an earlier essay, the “Reasons for Reason.

Tom Lehrer earned a BA and MA in mathematics from Harvard during the late 1940s, then taught math courses at MIT, Harvard, Wellesley, and UC-Santa Cruz. Math was his vocation. But, all along, Lehrer nurtured an interest in music.

Put Harvard researchers and world-class chefs together and what do you get? An unexpected combination and a course called Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine back in 2008, “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?” Here’s his answer, set to a newly-designed video. If you want to see the original TIME Q&A, you can revisit it on YouTube here.

Carl Sagan left a big void when he died in 1996. His eloquence, his passion for explaining science to a wider public, made him a major cultural figure in late 20th century America. Now a new voice is emerging.